The title of this piece hurt to write. One of the greatest weekends of my life was when my best friend from college came to my parent’s house for the weekend to hang out. We swung by a local game shop and picked up the new release we were excited for: Until Dawn. After grabbing some Hot And Ready pizzas from Little Ceasers, and a couple of twelve packs, we went back to my place and settled in for an exciting weekend. We must have played Until Dawn three or four times; letting characters die in one run, live the next, etc. That won’t be the case with The Casting of Frank Stone.

A few years later, Supermassive Games would develop Hidden Agenda, which doesn’t get the love it deserves. Hidden Agenda, and Larry Fessenden, solidified my love for Supermassive Games. I ate up every Dark Pictures Anthology game that would come out in the following years, and The Quarry was my favorite game of 2022. In my eyes, I could never NOT enjoy a Supermassive game. (Also I was an avid Dead by Daylight player years ago, with around 300 hours logged.) When I learned that Graham Reznick (Until Dawn, The Quarry) wrote a game that Supermassive Games developed that happened to take place within the Dead by Daylight universe, I was excited. After eight hours (we’ll touch on that) I can only ask, what went wrong?

A Multi-Timeline Horror Story in The Casting of Frank Stone

The Casting of Frank Stone takes us on an adventure through three different decades, following two groups of people. In the 80s we follow Chris Gordon (Rebecca LaChance), Linda Castle (Lucy Griffiths), Jaime Rivera (Andrew Wheildon-Dennis), Robert Green (Idris Debrand), and Bonnie Rivera (Díana Bermudez) as they attempt to film a horror movie in an abandoned steel mill. Robert’s father, Sam Green (Tobi Bakare), regularly patrols this Cedar Steel Mill due to an incident with a baby in the furnace room who was set to be killed at the hands of Frank Stone (Miles Ley). The second group we follow, set in the present, is comprised of Madi Rivera-Platt (Díana Bermudez), Linda Castle, and Bruno “Stan” Stanford III (Andrew Krueger). These three are brought to a mansion owned by Augustine Lieber (Hannah Morrish) for reasons that will become apparent all too soon. How do these two stories all come together?

You’ll have to play to find out.

If you are familiar with Supermassive games, then you’re familiar with their gameplay style. Multiple dialogue options affect relationships, which can dictate how later situations are handled; one missed quick-time event can take a character out of the story for good; collectibles scatter the map revealing deeper elements to the story; you get the drift.

The Casting of Frank Stone Struggles to Find Its Voice

The Casting of Frank Stone has every element of a Supermassive game, but it fails to hit the mark. Storywise, Frank Stone barely scratches the surface of anything resembling intriguing. Graham Reznick has proven his storytelling abilities over the years, from his video game writing, to Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear, to his compelling show Deadwax. The story of Frank Stone feels empty for the overwhelming majority of the game and then does a complete U-turn and bombards with too much information. Reznick’s script focuses heavily on building the unique ambiance of a world that exists within the Dead by Daylight world before realizing it should try and tell an intriguing story of its own. That being said, the final moment of the game, before the post-credit scene, gave me chills. Without revealing too much, the game’s final scene makes all of the frustration and hassle worth the playtime.

A Frustrating Playtime Filled With Severe Bugs

Let’s discuss the playtime. A simple Google search will show an approximate playtime of six hours, which is longer than most of the games in the Dark Pictures Anthology. So why did it take eight hours for me to play this game? The answer unfortunately lies in the overwhelming amount of game-crashing, soft-locking, rage-inducing bugs. Nine different times I would have a character walk into me, or I would try and pass another character, and I would *somehow* clip into the other character, rendering movement impossible. My PlayStation 5 froze multiple times during various scenes, which forced many unsafe PlayStation shutdowns.

The worst time this happened was during the final chapter. You’re faced with the decision to either shoot one character or Frank Stone. When I made my decision, my game froze. Once the game was loaded back up, I was thrust into the game moments after my decision. That’s when I realized the game was moving at, what seemed like, .0001 times speed. At first, I thought this was a creative decision. After two minutes passed I realized it was not. I was stuck in a single scene of the game as it moved in mega-slow motion for over half an hour. This is just simply unacceptable. Once the scene was over, it went back to regular speed, but I had enough at that point. While I played through to the end, it was at great personal protest.

Why Do So Many Triple-A Games Launch Unfinished?

Why is every game nowadays released unfinished or full of bugs? If you expect people to pay 40 to 80 dollars for a triple-A gaming experience, it should be a triple-A gaming experience. Extensive game testing should have brought some of the bugs I experienced to light. Gamers would happily wait an extra week or two (hell, or three) if it meant we were getting a top-of-the-line experience. A bug or two is fine. Multiple experience-halting bugs that hurt the gameplay is sad.

Over the past few years, we’ve learned how under-the-gun developers are. Some are forced to work insanely ridiculous hours to produce content at levels we’ve never seen before. (I’m referring to devs as a whole and not Supermassive.) One thing I appreciate about Supermassive is how I’ve never had an issue like this with any of their games before, and that’s why it hurts so much to write this.

If there’s anything I have learned from playing modern triple-A games is to expect the worst. It’s what we’ve become conditioned to expect.

Dead by Daylight References That Don’t Always Land

As stated earlier, I have quite a few hours in Dead by Daylight and still watch tons of Dead by Daylight content. Even with the amount of information I know about the Dead by Daylight universe, I still felt left out. Whenever I read a note or saw what I knew was supposed to be an easter egg, I just knew there was a Dead by Daylight reference going over my head. It’s clear the references weren’t meant for people like me, but I still couldn’t help but feel left out. That’s not a negative critique of the game, per se, only how I felt.

Acting-wise, it’s clear who is a voice actor and who is a screen actor. People like Rebecca LaChance, Díana Bermudez, and Andrew Wheildon-Dennis have extensive voice acting credits and it shows. They are clearly the [acting] highlights of The Casting of Frank Stone. Everyone else feels like they’re reading from a script they were handed an hour before they went into the booth. Until Dawn was a diamond amongst dung, it’s one of the few times screen actors expertly transitioned to voice actors for their performance. The decision to not have a cast full of experienced voice actors ultimately hurt the game’s number one vehicle for storytelling.

A Disappointing Entry, But Hope Remains for the Future

The Casting of Frank Stone ended up being an unfortunate experience for someone who is a diehard Supermassive Games fan. It’s far from the worst game of the year, but there’s no way it could crack my top 10 this year. I think I would enjoy more Supermassive/Behaviour Interactive games within the Dead by Daylight universe as there are so many fun angles they can take. And with the number of licensed characters Behaviour has, who knows which horror icons we could get in the style of a Supermassive game! I hope that Frank Stone is just a stumble into what could be a great new direction for Dead by Daylight and Supermassive. That said, I’m still looking forward to purchasing The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020 day one.